Credits: July 2005 Archives

Are these folks
the answer?It’s been a while since I’ve written about credits, so I thought I’d return to one of the great third rails of the WGA credits manual: the penalties levied against so-called “production executives”.

For the purposes of determining credits, production executives are defined as any participating writer who is also serving as either the director or in any capacity as a producer. If you’re a production executive, the rules skew mightily against you.

For starters, if you’re also the first writer of an original, you lose most of your protections (I’ve already written about how stupid that rule is here). Even if you’re a writer on an adaptation, you still get screwed. If you’re working solo, you must always show that you contributed at least 50% to the final script (whereas non-production executive writers need only show 33%) for screenplay credit.

Even worse, all other writers have no specific threshold anymore for credit. The arbiters can reward screenplay credit to the other writers for practically any level of contribution.

Ah, but that’s not all.

If you’re so unlucky as to have written as a team with a production executive, both you and the productive executive really get screwed: you must now show a 60% contribution for screenplay credit, and again, all other writers are subject to no standard for that very same credit.

So let’s review. You work on a screenplay as a team with the director. You and the director write just over half of the final script.

No credit for you.

The path to this particular hell is paved with intentions that are understandable, if not good. The theory is that directors and producers are in a position to glom on for credit. It’s happened to me, it’s happened to others. As such, the standards for directors and producers are made more stringent in the hopes that they will be deterred from taking advantage of opportunity and dabbling with the script just to get credit (and the residuals that go along with credit).

When it comes to directors, there’s not much one can do about this. The rule is what it is. But producers…well, that’s another story.

The problem is that the rules make no distinction between producers who are writing, and writers who are getting a producing credit.

Wouldn’t it be great if the stringent rules applied only to actual producers, and legitimate screenwriters weren’t punished simply for bargaining themselves an “above-and-beyond the call of screenwriting” credit like Co-Executive Producer or Associate Producer?

Until recently, no one really knew what the hell any of those credits actually meant, so it was impossible to imagine credits guidelines that used them as a basis of discrimination.

Enter The Producers Guild of America.

To be quite clear, the PGA isn’t a federally certified collective bargaining organization like the WGAw or the DGA or SAG. It’s an umbrella organization that represents some pretty big time movie producers who are pooling their resources to try and get some things done. One of their goals is to set some ground rules that define what all those producing credits mean, in order to preserve some legitimacy for the most important of producing credits…”Produced by”.

By defining the sub-producer credits, the PGA may have given us a road map we can use to better define who should be penalized in the WGA credits process for being a “production executive”. The fact is that Associate Producers have no real power to hire or fire writers or influence the writing of the screenplay in any way. “Co-Executive Producer” is often a vanity credit awarded to key studio executives, folks who were around when the project was set up, etc.

I believe that other than directors, the only people who should be penalized for being production executives are those who earn the credits “Produced by” and “Executive Produced by”. The other production credits should be available to legitimate writers to earn freely and without detriment.

Defending writers and their credits against predatory producers is a good thing. Limiting writers’ ability to earn additional recognition as filmmakers is a bad thing. A stupid thing. To date, the Guild hasn’t done a very good job of balancing the need of protection with the right of entrepreneurialism.

Until they do, many writers will continue to anonymously perform filmmaking duties above and beyond the call of screenwriting…because of the punitive policies of their own union.

Call it “counter-productive” in every sense of the word.